Saturday, December 10, 2016

Trump vs spy

WASHINGTON — An extraordinary breach has emerged between President-elect Donald Trump and the national security establishment, with Trump mocking U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia interfered in the election on his behalf, and top Republicans vowing investigations into Kremlin activities.Trump in effect declared war on the intelligence agencies in a statement issued by his transition team Friday evening. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s team said, adding that the election was over and that it was time to “move on.”Though Trump has wasted no time in antagonizing the agencies, to carry out priorities such as combating terrorism he will have to rely on them for the sort of espionage activities and analysis that they spend more than $70 billion a year to perform.

Difficult issue. We would like to cut their budget, but the CIA is as manipulative as all the other agencies back there. It may be hopeless, there just maybe too much swampdom to actually perform defense functions.. When the Republican binge spenders start declaring wars in the middle of the night, they run up the costs fearsome.